Hundreds protest over planned teacher cuts in the Western Cape

On Friday morning, teachers, parents, unions and civil society organisations protested outside the offices of the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) in Cape Town, against the planned cutting of 2,407 teaching posts by the department. Protests were also held in other parts of the province, including Worcester, Grabouw, Hermanus and Elsies River.

In a statement issued at the beginning of this month, WCED announced that some teachers will not be reappointed after their contracts end on 31 December 2024. “We understand that this will result in difficult choices for our schools. We have been engaging with teachers’ unions in this regard over the past month, to ensure that they understand the reason behind this decision. We are in this position because we are being short-changed by the national government, receiving only 64% of the cost of the nationally negotiated wage agreement, leaving the province to fund the remaining 36%,” reads their statement.

‘But we need more
teachers, not less!’

Abeedah Adams, one of the organisers of a campaign to fight against the budget cuts, said the people most affected by this decision will be learners from poor, working class communities. “It’s incorrect for the WCED official to say we are playing politics when we ask them, what communities will be most affected by the cutting of 2,407 posts. These teachers and their livelihoods will be affected by this. It’s really opportunistic for the department to say they are not retrenching teachers and are merely not renewing contracts. It’s not like those teachers on contracts are not needed. We in fact need more teachers,” she told Elitsha.

During a recent meeting with some of the teachers, one teacher admitted that she teaches over 60 learners in one classroom. “This will further disadvantage black and working class children, in terms of their access to education, in a country that already battles with a literacy crisis. Tertiary students, who are doing teaching are also mobilising because this means their chances of securing jobs are even more reduced. We need education if we want to address the inequalities in our society. We have a huge bloated cabinet of the Government of National Unity (GNU) – is that necessary?” asked Adams.

Researcher at Equal Education (EE), Mahfouz Raffee, said, “The budget cuts are devastating and are something we cannot afford. This issue of the cutting of posts is just the tip of the iceberg. For years, we have been fighting overcrowding in schools. We have been fighting for safety at schools, we have been fighting for psycho-social support at schools. All of this is being undermined by the austerity measures that are being implemented by the national and provincial governments.”

Lindelwa Mahlangabeza, a teacher at Ludwe Ngamlana Primary School in Khayelitsha, said, “I am in solidarity with the protests because the department has even removed those teachers who were already in the system. We want the government to consider how this will affect the lives of black kids mostly, with parents from poor working class communities, who cannot afford to take their kids to fee-paying schools.”

Picket outside Siphamandla High in Khayelitsha on Friday. Photo by Mzi Velapi

“We are concerned that the WCED is de-prioritising students and teachers in the allocation of the budget. What we see is that WCED spends less on education as compared to other provinces. We will continue with these efforts and support these protests, especially in the build up to the medium term budget policy statement,” said Aliya Chikte from the Alternative Information and Development Centre (AIDC).

Western Cape South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) secretary Sibongile Kwazi, said they are opposed to the job cuts and have written to the bargaining council, to argue on behalf of many contract teachers who have been sitting on the system and were supposed to have been made permanent. “There is a written agreement that if a teacher works in a vacant post for more than three months on contract and they are qualified for that post, they should be converted to permanent status. The WCED has a backlog of this conversion, it has not been happening. All unions are opposed to the job cuts. This is not just about saving jobs also. This decision by WCED undermines the rights of learners from working class communities to learn in a conducive environment. If they retrench teachers, then this means come 2025 we will have schools crowded with learners without teachers,” said Kwazi.

Sadtu proposed areas where the WCED could re-prioritise the budget and save the teaching jobs, but they could not agree. The Back on Track programme, for example, has a budget of over R1.2-billion to make-up for lost learning time during the Covid-19 pandemic but it is not reaching all learners, Kwazi argued. “We told them, we can re-direct this money to the basket of educator posts.” She said Sadtu supports all protests in communities that seek to push back against the cuts.

Education MEC David Maynier, on Friday, said, the protestors are correct, that budget cuts will harm education. “This is precisely why we are fighting hard for our teachers on the national level. The decision by the national government to not fully fund the 2023 multi-year wage agreement has caused a fiscal emergency in all provincial education departments. This is why all provinces are working together through the Council of Education Ministers to approach the national treasury with a clear picture of how devastating the decision not to fund the wage agreement has been for provincial education departments,” said Maynier.

A parent who also joined the protest outside WCED, Daphney Arosi pointed to the WCED’s failures in school admissions as evidence that “they do not take the education of black learners seriously”. Cutting teachers, she said, will further harm their educational prospects. “Schools here are already overcrowded, so how will a fewer number of teachers cope with huge numbers of learners?” asked Arosi.